Some folks may now begin to ask: What the hell is Southern Gothic?
One of the best quotes used to describe the genre came from Prince of Tides author Pat Conroy (South Carolina): "My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, 'All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister."
Let's break it down. The Southern part comes easy. Any of the states which successfully seceded counts, as well as those who were unsuccessful (Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland). Add a little West Virginia, a dead mule, and a whole lot of attitude and there you have it.
The Gothic part is a bit trickier. Gothic was a literary movement born in the mid-eighteenth century that combined horror and romance, while calling attention to the social ills of its time. Big names of the day were Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley, of Frankenstein fame.
Horror brought downriver to the South. Who can complain about that?
But the "social ills" of the South can make things ... sticky. There are plenty Southern topics that folks don't discuss in polite company. Namely race and religion. But to leave either of those things out of Southern Gothic fiction is to deny the genre its allure. Also, that pesky little skirmish known as The War Between the States. It happened. There were repercussions, as well as resentments. Every page of the Southern Gothic drips with violence. And why not? We write what we know.
After all, this is real Southern, not an issue of Garden & Gun.
There's no point in hiding crazy in Southern Gothic. Hell, there's no point in hiding crazy in the South. Somewhere in every Southerner's woodpile is a "grotesque" and it stands out in the fiction to mirror or shine a light on the ills of society. Flannery O'Connor once said, "Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it's going to be called realistic."South. We down here dress up crazy and set it out on the porch with a julep or a glass of sweet tea. Why hide it in fiction? In fact, we've given it a name and it's vital to the genre:
But the most spellbinding facet of Southern Gothic fiction is the magical realism. We're not talking the silliness in the pages of Stephen King's supernatural bestsellers. No, something macabre and fantastic tickles the imaginations once a reader steps foot among the Spanish moss in the swamps, or crosses the cobblestoned, gas-lit streets of the South. There's something demented and deranged in the magnolias and chances are, it ain't supernatural. A HooDoo woman with an itch to scratch. The restless spirits of town elders looking to protect the citizens from harm ... Is it real or imagined? Keep turning the pages to find out.
Cypress knees. A grocery run by the angry town drunk (who happens to be your uncle). A freak
